In the fourth book of the series, Dorothy and The Wizard in Oz, Dorothy and The Wizard don't actually spend all that much time in the land of Oz, but rather spend an awful lot of time getting there. Baum's interest in the people and places of Oz was by then flagging more than a little bit, and he seems not to have understood that many of the other fantasy stories that he wanted to tell could have been placed just as well in Oz and featured familiar characters. But no -- Baum persisted in creating new fantasy lands, all with two-letter names, Ev and Ix and Mo, and pursued the Oz books only from a sense of obligation. From time to time he was genuinely inspired by Oz, however, which is why the later Patchwork Girl of Oz is such a shining light in the series. By the time he started up his movie studio, The Oz Film Mfg. Co., he had "wised up" to a certain extent, and one of his first features, The Magic Cloak of Oz, was actually an adaptation of his non-Oz fantasy novel Queen Xixi of Ix.
However, in volume four of the Oz books, Dorothy and the Wizard did get to visit the land of the Mangaboos: human-looking creatures who were actually plants -- flowers, if you will. The Mangaboos did have a dark aside but we won't get into that here: this card is only concerned with their budding, germinating, growing aspect.
-- Frede.
